Portable hand-held screw driving tools have been available from Senco Products, Inc. for several years. Some of the previous tools sold by Senco were used with screw lengths in the range of one inch to two inches. Many of these tools have been “bottom feed” tools, in which a flexible collated strip of screws was fed from the bottom portion of the tool toward the front or nose of the tool, where the individual screws are taken from the collated plastic strip and driven into a solid object.
The flexible screw strips can be difficult to manage, and at times it is difficult to prevent the screws from bunching or tangling during a driving sequence. This tangling/bunching phenomena can occur when the collated screws have been fed into a slide body mechanism, and once the driving mechanism has been actuated, the screws will have a tendency to cross over one another, perhaps creating a jam or a misfeed. This may occur whether the tool is being driven in a horizontal or a vertical plane (or at other angles).
In the earlier tools sold by Senco, the collated strip of screws did not tend to readily become bunched or tangled during drive sequences of the tool, for two main reasons: (1) the screws were shorter and were not very heavy, and (2) the distance between the guide portion of the handle and the nose piece of the tool was fairly short, thereby providing a lesser distance within which the collated strip could possibly become bunched or tangled, or otherwise sag. Examples of such screw driving tools that have been available in the past are Senco Tool Model No. DS 162-14V and Senco Tool Model No. DS200-14V.
It would be an improvement to provide a portable hand-held screw driving tool that could be used with longer screws that were provided on a collated strip, but at the same time provide a means for preventing the collated strip from sagging or otherwise bunching or tangling.